BLAS CATCHES UP TO ‘CRAZY’ CRITICS
The mayor needs to understand that it's time for him to shut up, listen and learn.
MAYOR de Blasio hosted a recent roundtable discussion with his top adviser (and wife, coincidentally) Chirlane McCray on mentalhealth outreach in the city. Not to make light of the topic, but it was oddly appropriate: De Blasio has spent most of his term so far trying to convince New Yorkers they’re crazy. He’s been gaslighting us. For example, when I, along with other city residents, noticed there were more potholes and fewer road repairs being done by the city’s Department of Transportation, City Hall said we were delusional.
When New Yorkers spotted more rats on the streets and subways, the mayor said it was an illusion. We must’ve been seeing things. Then we learned we were right: The city was on pace for a record number of “rat calls” to its complaint hotline.
When crime in Central Park began to rise over the summer — we were sure of it! — those of us noticing renewed threats to public safety were told it was a some sort of misconception. But of course, numbers don’t lie: Through August, there were twice as many forcible robberies in the park as there were in 2014.
And when day after day, month after month, we all saw the mounting number of homeless, mentally ill and panhandlers flooding our streets and subways, de Blasio acted like we were all hallucinating. The stats, he repeated, indicated that our eyes were deceiving us. In fact, boasted City Hall, there were fewer homeless and mentally ill than during the Bloomberg years.
And then last week we were all vindicated.
“The mistake the administration made early on was not validating what everyone was see ing,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Thursday, as The Post reported. “The problem was increasing.”
“I’m frustrated with it, but we are working on it,” Bratton added later. “And it is not for a lack of commitment, it’s not for a lack of resources . . . but it is going to take time to deal within the laws we have to work with and the extent to which the problem has exploded.”
After defending the mayor for months, Bratton finally acknowledged we were right and they were wrong. We still weren’t crazy after all these years.
The next day de Blasio blurted out that he hadn’t explained well enough what the city was doing about homelessness. So his latest venture to address this was to post a listing for a senior speechwriter to “refine his facts and messaging.”
He now promises to spend $2.6 billion to house the homeless. But that’s just throwing money at a problem he’s barely willing to acknowledge. And still this administration refuses to deal with the many paranoid and schizophrenic homeless who are a continued danger to themselves and everyone else. The panhandlers are everywhere; like politicians looking to get wined, dined and pocketlined by lobbyists, they expect us to grease them daily.
The mayor needs to understand that it’s time for him to shut up, listen and learn. It’s something that he refused to do with his former deputy mayor Lilliam BarriosPaoli, who, after serving in the Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, was put in charge of de Blasio’s homeless outreach. She quit after, apparently, not getting face time with the mayor. She wasn’t the only official to get shut out.
De Blasio knew better than all of them — and all of us. But now he needs to make amends.
Because he has been so pretentious on this and other issues, it’s time that he go on a listening tour of the five boroughs. He should sit and listen to constructive criticism in neighborhoods he hasn’t visited since he campaigned for mayor. No more hiding behind council members who vet out critics on the mayor’s behalf. And while touring the city, he’ll be forced to confront other issues.
In Bayside, where local Democrats complain he’s MIA, he’ll hear about masstransit and publiceducation problems. On Staten Island, he’ll hear from New Yorkers whose neighborhoods are awash with heroin.
It’s time for de Blasio to get moving and catch up on lost time. Of course, it might take him longer to get around these days, what with all the potholes.
Curtis Sliwa, founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels, can be heard on the “Curtis & Kuby” show on 77 WABC radio.